The global campaign to stomp out BitTorrent and eDonkey2000 indexing sites continued today, this time in the P2P stronghold of Spain. In raids conducted this morning, Spanish Police arrested 15 administrators/owners related to 17 BitTorrent and eDonkey2000 indexing sites.

The move is highly unusual, as Spain has long been known as tolerant of file-sharing and P2P activities. Among many other important P2P developments, it's the home of Pablo Soto, developer of Piolet and the Manolito P2P network. This lenient attitude towards file-sharing appears to be shifting, as these raids mark the first time such an event has occurred in Spain.

According to the police press release, today's raids were the culmination of a lengthy investigation that began in October 2005. The result of this investigation purports the closure of 17 indexing sites, however several are still operational. The remaining operational sites are pctracker.com, pctorrent.com, pctorrent.net, pctorrent.org and tododatos.com.

In an effort to avoid prosecution, the police state all of the 17 indexing sites were hosted outside of Spain. The administrators/owners however, continued to reside in Spain.

The "Asociacion de Internautas" (AI), a consumer organization similar to the EFF, scorned the raids, stating that indexing files is not illegal in Spain. Roughly translated, the AI likened the arrests today with holding the post office responsible for illegal mail shipments.

"The suppliers of services are not responsible for the [actions of their users], it is as if Post office were responsible for which their shipments contain."